Exciting news! The day is almost upon us: Windows 8.1 is being released to the public tomorrow around the world. Starting with New Zealand at Midnight (which is 4 AM Pacific Time) the free update for Windows 8 will begin appearing in the Windows Store for end users.

Perhaps unluckily, it will be a staged roll out and people around the world may not actually see the code appear at 4 AM PT.

Microsoft has today unveiled the next minor update to Windows Phone 8 hot on the heels of AT&T finally getting around to releasing GDR2 for devices on their network. If you’re not familiar with the GDR releases, they stand for General Distribution Release and are similar to service packs or minor feature updates for the platform.

If you’d asked us what the best antivirus product on the market was we’d tell you hands down that you should use Microsoft Security Essentials. It’s the most un-intrusive, lightweight and simple product available that doesn’t prompt you to upgrade to a paid version since it’s built by Microsoft.

Alas, it looks like Microsoft has given up on the product. In a recent interview given by Holly Stewart, the senior program manager of the Microsoft Malware Protection Center the company has downplayed the importance of the product and recommends you use something else too.

Comments Off on Microsoft announces Surface Pro 2 and Surface 2 with slew of new accessories

At a Surface event in New York City today, Microsoft announced the next generation of their Surface devices and they did not disappoint. While we would consider the upgrade only incremental in nature, the company has announced a massive set of accessories which help complete the device.

Not only this, the company has announced amazing ranges of the devices as well as availability in October for many countries around the world.

A long time ago Microsoft was a company that was young, attractive and exciting. Of course, those aren’t metrics that we could easily quantify but if you look at the company over the last ten years you’ll see that they became boring and increasingly comfortable with what they had and their position in the market despite everyone else accelerating away from them.

My name is Sydney and I’m an AppStorm writer, a freelance web designer, a beagle mom and a software enthusiast. I’m flexible when it comes to operating systems. My current setup is a Windows 8 desktop PC, a 13″ MacBook Pro running Mountain Lion, a jailbroken iPhone 4 and a decked out installation of Chrome synced between my computers. I spend a lot of time in my browser and I’m a huge fan of text expansion and shortcuts.

Over the past few weeks, the writers here at Windows.AppStorm have been sharing the apps that they have found to be essential while writing. It’s been very interesting to see how my fellow writers work as well as the diverse range of apps that they use. Now it’s time for me to share my list of apps that I couldn’t write without.

The good folks here at AppStorm thought it may be of interest to take a look at how each of us works on a daily basis and now it is my turn to provide a bit of insight into what I use on a daily basis. Of course, being a freelance writer means I am not a normal use-case scenario as far a computer users goes, but perhaps some of you will find a few interesting things here that you can use in your everyday life.

On Windows.Appstorm, over the next few weeks, the writers on the site are going to be giving you more information about their workflows. As the title suggests, each writer will show you the apps they use to help write the articles you read and love. The series will talk about the apps from a very personal view and if we’ve done reviews of the apps in the past we will link them. Alongside this we’ll add a brief paragraph introducing ourselves to you.

Think of this series as a “getting to know the writers”/ “learn about some fantastic apps which you should be using.” We hope you like it!